If you have an online store, you need traffic on your store. You need the traffic to generate sales and build revenue. Generally speaking, there are three different kinds of web traffic:
  • Organic traffic
  • Referral traffic
  • Direct traffic
Organic traffic is traffic that originates from a search engine. When visitors come to your store from Google Search, Bing Search, Yahoo Search, Yandex Search, Duck Duck Search, etc. it is organic traffic.

Referral traffic is social media traffic. When visitors come to your store from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube, etc, it is referral traffic.

Direct traffic is the traffic that comes to your site by following your store URL or web page link. For example, if someone visits your store through a link you have shared on your forum profile or signature, it is direct traffic. If someone lands on your store through a link you send through an email, it is also direct traffic.

Different Ways to Build Traffic on Your Online Store

Irrespective of the type of website traffic you want on your store, you can basically build traffic through two methods:
  • SEO
  • Digital Marketing
When you do SEO, you will build organic traffic because SEO will help your website rank high on search engines and when your website is ranked high on search results, you will get visitors from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

You can build referral traffic and direct traffic through digital marketing. Digital marketing means promoting your store on various platforms like search engines, social media, blogs and websites, newsletters, etc.

Alternative Traffic Methods You Can Try

If you are running an online store, you will have to work hard on building traffic. You will have to look for all sorts of traffic generation methods. Here are some alternative ways to build traffic to your store.
  • Paid Ads
  • Email Marketing
  • Guest Posts
  • Forum Posting
  • Youtube Videos, TikTok Videos
Interestingly, all of these methods are some forms of digital marketing that are not very common among marketers or online entrepreneurs. Even when some methods are common) paid ads or email marketing for example), people try to avoid these methods because of the cost involved or conversion rate. If you own an online store and have not tried any of the aforementioned methods, you should definitely give them a try. These are very powerful mediums to build traffic.

5 Alternative Traffic Sources for Your Online Store
  • Paid Ads
If you do search engine marketing, you will generate traffic from search engines. Search engine marketing means running ads on search engines. When people click on your ads on search engines, you get traffic from search engines even though you are paying for traffic. This is one of the best traffic sources that you can try for your online store if you intend to spend money on marketing. Other forms of paid ads you can try are Meta ads, Twitter Ads, Adwords, Bing Ads, CPM, and PPC ads on other advertising networks.
  • Email Marketing
A lot of people have this impression that email marketing is spamming someone’s inbox and there is zero conversion because the receiver will immediately send your emails to a trash bin. However, not many people realize that this is a cheap, reliable, and very fast method to build traffic to your store. In order to build an effective email marketing campaign, you need to build subscribers on your store by encouraging your visitors, one-time buyers, and frequent buyers to subscribe to your email services. When you have a lot of subscribers, you can make them happy by sending emails about new deals and exclusive offers.
  • Guest Posting
Guest posting means you write articles about your products, services, or business and publish them on a high-traffic website in a similar niche. If you publish a post on a website that has huge traffic, the readers of your post will check your store through the links you have shared on your guest post. If your content is evergreen and if the website where you have published has recurrent traffic, you will be able to build long-term traffic through guest posting.
  • Forum Posting
Forums are online communities that you can use not only to promote your store but also to share information on your niche and when you manage to impress other people in the forums, they might check the links you have shared along with your posts. In order to benefit from this method, first of all, you need to build authority in your niche and build trust among other users. The more forums you are active on, the more traffic you are likely to build on your store.
  • Youtube and Tiktok Videos
You can use videos to market your store, however, your videos should not necessarily be marketing videos. In other words, you don’t require to create video ads to promote your store. You can publish general interest videos on youtube and TikTok and build traffic to your store through the links you have shared along with your videos. In order to benefit from this method, create useful, interesting, informative, and engaging videos, share your links in the description or pin the link as a comment. People who like your videos might be interested in checking your links. However, you need to remember one simple rule which is to publish videos that provide great value to the platform you are publishing your video. This will make sure your video is frequently pushed up in the algorithm.

Building Traffic: Things to Remember
  • Never depend on a single traffic source. You might be getting a lot of search traffic but you might lose that traffic once search engines introduce new updates.
  • Never use one type of digital marketing, try to use multiple digital marketing methods. For example, if you are using social media marketing, you also need to use email marketing or forum marketing as well.
  • Use both, paid and free traffic generation methods. Do not entirely depend on free traffic and do not always use paid traffic.
  • Build a loyal audience on multiple social media platforms, likewise, also build genuine subscribers for your email services.
Conclusion

No matter what traffic method you are trying to use, you need to remember one important thing which is traffic conversion. You just don't need traffic, you need traffic that actually converts.